Dear Yoshi P: What is your vision?

[User201109011315]

When I read a press release from someone like Jake Song (founder of the original Lineage and director of ArcheAge), you can see his dedication to a specific design-philosophy. His view on MMORPGs is strong and well-defined. The benefit of this is that people who subscribe to the same principles then want to play his games. The same can be said for basically any director of any MMO coming out in the immediate future. I can't think of one game where I'm like "wtf is this game even trying to BE?".

Maybe it's Yoshi's inexperience, or maybe his naievity/idealism, but when I read any of his press releases (letters from the director), it just doesn't seem like the lights are on upstairs, if you know what I mean. When he first took over, he seemed like an improvement to Tanaka. But after so many months of wishy washy statements... you begin to wonder.

Is it so hard for a director of a game to say: "Here are our beliefs, this is how we intend to achieve them, these are our perceived problems with the MMO genre as a whole, and this is how we intend to tap into the market, this is our target audience."

SE's current strategy of appeasement will just result in a diluted experience for everyone. It already is. Trying to accommodate every complaint will mean a never ending process of revision, it's just going to be a perpetual battle of revising every game system; features that may not have needed fundamental revision to begin with (see battle system).

What I get from Yoshi's letters, and maybe I'm mistaken (who knows!), is that he's so fixated on this mentality of "players want everything to be changed from the ground up" when that may not necessarily be true. And anyway, being at the mercy of every player's whim is not the role of a director. A director needs a birds-eye-view of the game in order to create a cohesive game world. And many players lack that kind of scope. In this way, listening to players and bending to their will is hardly the best strategy.

[Sonic_the_Hedgehog]

What I get from Yoshi's letters, and maybe I'm mistaken (who knows!), is that he's so fixated on this mentality of "players want everything to be changed from the ground up" when that may not necessarily be true. And anyway, being at the mercy of every player's whim is not the role of a director. A director needs a birds-eye-view of the game in order to create a cohesive game world. And many players lack that kind of scope. In this way, listening to players and bending to their will is hardly the best strategy.

Well the majority of players did vote yes to radically changing the rules of Eorzea. Besides he has a vision, you just continue to ignore it. Read the quotes that Rhomagus posted.

[Konachibi]

P.S It would also be appreciated if community reps could post relevant information to point the thread 'troller' or 'rager' to where he is wrong in his ignorant view-point, much like Sonic_The_Hedgehog has in the post above me. This would perhaps may them pay more attention to what people are discussing, rather trying to argue about something they really do know nothing about.

Your happy miqo'te player,

Konachibi
xxxxx